Why All the Talk of Brutally Hard Heroics is Bittersweet for Me

So if Twitter is any indication, 90% of the WoW-playing world is happy about the return of CC and “hard heroics” that went the way of the Dodo in Wrath of the Lich King.

But I gotta admit, I’m not entirely with you hallelujah-singers.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved the heck out of Burning Crusade heroics. I loved chain trapping. I loved long, careful pulls with the raid icons on everything. I loved heroics that took like an hour to do. I loved when asking people to get on Vent for heroics was considered a reasonable request. I loved having to claw your way up the ladder of normal instances and then having to get keyed for Heroics and then failing on mini-bosses in said heroics. I loved going nuts over blues. Oh gosh, I loved it all. I look back on it fondly.

But see, here’s the thing. My life has changed. A lot. And I don’t have time for that anymore.

I am sure you all know about the IRL problems that have been plaguing me lately, so I won’t recount them any more here. It’s why I quit raiding; I don’t have the time or dedication to be able to put a lot of energy into that sort of thing anymore. Doesn’t mean I don’t like raiding. I love raiding. Just means it’s pretty low on the priority totem pole at the moment.

Same deal goes for heroics. If it takes longer to do heroics– if heroics are like mini-raids– then they are no longer something I can do if I have a spare twenty minutes. You know?

Wrath of the Lich King was nice for me because it happened to “turn casual” right when I needed it to. Unfortunately, I’m not ready for it to go back on that difficulty upswing again.

I’m not crying or asking for the game to change to fit my needs; that would be silly. A lot of people have been asking for a return to BC-esque Heroics for a long time, and I know where you guys are coming from. I hope you guys enjoy it all. I hope all the WotLK-babies out there get to see a nice glimpse of one of the things I loved so much about Burning Crusade.

But me, well, I’ll be playing low-level alts. I haven’t even stepped foot in the new level 80+ zones yet. Why rush to something I may not really be able to properly participate in?

14 thoughts on “Why All the Talk of Brutally Hard Heroics is Bittersweet for Me”

Heh, I guess I don’t look at it as fondly as you do – maybe it was different on your server, but I remember busting my ass to forge a reputation as not being completely worthless to being invited into things like H-SH or H-MrT.

On a server that I have very little networking on and in the era of the Random Dungeon Finder, I do not relish the game returning to a “CC MANDATORY INTERRUPTS MANDATORY FAIL ONCE AND WIPE” mantra that’s more Vanilla-esque even than TBC-esque. *shrug*

@ Rilgon – I think I lucked out because back then I had a lot of good friends who knew of my trapping abilities and as such invited me to pretty much everything, assuming I was around. With PuGs I could usually (though not always) convince people pretty early on that I knew what I was doing.

I 100% understand what you’re saying, though, I imagine without a lot of connections it must have been difficult for hunters especially. And yeah, with the Random Dungeon Finder now, I imagine it must not be pretty…

Yeah, when I came back in TBC (around 2.1), it was on a server that I’d never played on – it was basically the “hey, try this server” thing that came up when I made my first character (Spirestone, IIRC). The mindset was very heavily anti-Hunter, and especially for someone who point-blank refused to play BM/SV.

I dunno. I don’t even have the expansion yet and if I do end up doing anything in end-game, it’s probably going to be on my DK or my new Warrior, because like hell I’m selling out; I didn’t in TBC 1.0 and I sure as hell won’t in TBC 2.0. I’d rather play a different class.

I like the idea of trapping and CC and all the stuff that let hunters show off how well they can play, but I admit I don’t like the idea of hour, hour and a half long heroics.

Things WILL get easier though. Maybe right now heroics are hard, but in a few months after the next tier or two of equipment comes out they’ll be easier to pug, the old raid gear will now be justice point gear, and everyone will start going through them faster.

WotLK era heroics were easy, but people didn’t do the 6-8 minute speed runs of heroic AN until well into ICC gear.

I like the idea of trapping and CC and all the stuff that let hunters show off how well they can play

That’s the problem – unless you’re in a static group, you’re not going to get that chance. In this era of LFD, Hunters will more than likely be vote kicked for Mages, Warlocks, Shaman, Paladins, and the like who have accurate, directly-castable, easily-renewed, not-on-spell-hit-table CC. CC that works, unlike Freezing Trap.

(And before you go on about “well if you don’t like Freezing Trap you just can’t use it”, I’ve done H-MrT and Moroes and the 45 minute H-SH run when they were all relevant content, thank you very much.)

well in all honesty, there is no reason to rush in and beat your face against things- there are numerous regulars that are rather fun and interesting assuming everyone is not sloppy in it- they are still fun and will only get more fun when people are slightly more experienced at them- heroics on the other hand- well you really have no hope of them getting easier til the next patch when the current “frost gear” is down to “triumph gear” and people start outgearing stuff.

I would say, for the record, that some of the new dungeons — if you take out things like Halls of Origination, which is a bit of a slog at the moment — are totally reasonable for a 20-30 minute playtime experience on normal. Heroics are gonna be a slog until we get to raid tier gear, but grabbing a normal, you can run a bit looser, and I’ve gotten in the habit of marking one or two things for the CCers — moon and square — and then just pulling without too much trouble.

I highly recommend Vortex Pinnacle as one of the shorter dungeons. There’s really only 2 or 3 pulls you need to CC with a reasonable tank (one who is geared for heroics), and it’s just really damn pretty.

Pike….I think that you will love Hyjal It’s pretty rich with lore and brings back a few old familiar NPCs in different roles. You can get along really well as a decently geared BM hunter. I did the whole thing in my Wrath gear. Just play carefully and enjoy the scenery and the lore. Some folks love Vasj’ir as well….I hated it. I just didn’t relate to the place. I have yet to set foot in an instance other than to find the entrances. Folks are correct in saying that the dungeon finder is painful these days. I queue up a couple of times, saw an average wait time of 59 minutes, left queue and went back to questing

I’m one of those that has gone on record as being “happy that things will be hard” – I think I did some of this out of spite though as I’m personally just too busy to do much more than play around on my alts.

Having a steady group of dungeon runners will be the best possible way to experience the new content. Maybe by the time my schedule sorts itself out – I’ll have one of those….

The other day I met a Cataclysm baby. I don’t know how many of those are around, but I wonder how they’re going to experience this “new” heroics mechanics because they’ll be experiencing hard heroics for the first time anyway.

The pendulum always swings in World of Warcraft. It’s an endless cycle.

I’m returning and rerolling in a couple of days, so it’ll be a while before I hit the Cata content myself. I wish I could give you my personal experience on it all, but I do still have my foot in the door of things.

However, I hear they’re not quite as difficult as people are hailing. Friends of mine call it “TBC Lite” since it seems to ramp between TBC and WotLK and basics very much stay the same– don’t stand in the fire, once you learn that boss mechanics, you’re set. I suspect the How To’s will be online within a week, if they’re not already. Some CC is required, depending on what/whom your group is made up of, but not quite as tediously necessary as initially thought.

The new heroics are hard, but not really as bad as the old BC ones. I remember back then cc would break for no discernable reason, some mobs hit really hard and couldn’t be cc-ed and needed to be kited around (looking at you, Slave Pen Nagas).

Things are a lot different today, mobs that are cc-ed usually stay cc-ed unless someone hits them. If they are somehow loose and takes a few swings at you, you won’t get one-shot (looking at you, Shattered Halls trash). Trap launcher for hunters, implemented in Wrath, finally sees some use in Cata.

I do agree with the time factor thing. In a typical night I can now accomplish much less in WoW after putting the kid in bed. Some nights, I won’t be able to run any at all.

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Hi, I'm Pike. I like Hunters. I play a lot of them, and have been doing so since patch Two point freaking Oh.

I did a lot of raids and heroics in Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and then quit playing for a long time because I got bored. Now I'm playing again as a filthy casual, and I intend to sprinkle casual pixie dust all over the blogosphere.

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